You begin this CTM survival map holding a cookie, which pretty much sold me on the whole map immediately. Give me a cookie and I will happily minecraft all day long. Heck, the cookie even distracted me from the fact that my little room was lit by pouring lava. The second thing that sold me on this CTM map is that survival tactics are allowed. Want to make a little house with a wheat farm beside it? Go ahead. Block breaking isn’t just allowed, it’s encouraged.

The adventure part of the map comes in the form of passages, dungeons and trials each more dangerous than the one before. Because you are allowed to break and place blocks as you like, overcoming these challenges is a matter of motivation and crafting techniques, not mad leaping from ladder to ladder. I felt a lot more engaged with this map than with other CTM maps that simply made you leap into lava for their own amusement.

Good use of Ender Chests means that you can store the precious wool you need to complete the monument, so should you fall prey to one of the tricksy traps set for you, the game is not necessarily over then and there.

Caves of Darkoth makes the player engage in genuine minecraft activities, mining, smelting, sailing, fishing, you know, real survival stuff. You can’t always see where you’re going and you’re never sure where the next monster will rear its head, but you’re never bored either.

One of the most visually stunning minecraft survival maps for 1.4, Survival Inverse takes the normal survival scenario and tips it on its head. Here you must survive amidst vast columns of water, not unlike Moses parting the Red Sea. It should be easy to survive on the sea floor, where the trees are made of diamond and stone and the walls are comforting bedrock. Unfortunately these things are never as easy as they seem, especially when it comes time to try to make some kind of farm. What is this, a survival map for Breathatarians?

The map is filled with all kinds of challenges, challenges that offer you unique opportunities to fall into lava, or be brained by a passing squid.(more…)

This island is what happens when you take Minecraft out for a night of hard liquor and even harder women and then switch it on the next morning. If that analogy isn’t appropriate for you, it is what happens when Elmo and Megatron have a fight. This small block of WTF is nestled cosily in the void, and it is your job, as a player of the game of minecraft, to attempt some form of survival upon it. No animals will spawn naturally at first (unless you count the three little pigs clinging to outcroppings above an endless fall,) who are highly likely to turn themselves into cooked pork chops if they get loose. Arable land is at a premium, meaning there is almost none of it. Good luck growing crops when the flame from the netherblock keeps turning them into crispy wheat flakes before you get a chance to harvest them.

This simple minecraft survival island / sky block map is the sort of thing that survival dreams are made of. Can you sort out the chaos that is the random smattering of blocks into something useful? Or will you slip and fall into the void, never to spawn correctly again? Although this sort of map has definitely been done before, the randomized terrain adds a new level of challenge that most players will find quite enjoyable. I liked the fact that the mandatory ‘single tree’ wasn’t one of the usual oak tree sticking out like a sore thumb. This is a sky survival map for a new generation, a generation of players using the minecraft 1.4 update.

A new type of minecraft survival challenge, tower survival is simple: survive in a tower.

All the best minecraft survival maps have a simple premise. Sky Block: Survive in the sky. Survival Island: Survive on an island.

Unlike Survival Island and Sky Block, this survival map has an end point. When your tower is fifty blocks high, you can consider yourself to be finished in the goal of surviving. You build your tower by collecting stone bricks from hidden chests located around the small area of forest that is yours to roam. You can gather wood too, but beware that chopping wood is a dangerous game. If distracted you may fall victim to one of the many stray creepers released by the villainous map maker in an effort to undermine your tower building efforts.

You are of course free to impress your own imagination on this map. Your tower is allowed to be as fancy or as simple as you like. If you are accomplished you may create a lava moat. If you are mad, you might build your tower all the way into the fifth dimension.

Oh minecraft survival cubes. They’ve all been done before. But not like this:

Oh my! This is a desert like none seen before. Look at those towering pillars of sand. Now look again and realize that this is a CTM (complete the monument) map and realize that there’s probably something valuable under all those tonnes of silica and ground rock. Hope you’ve got a shovel at the ready. Or fifty.(more…)